Sunday, August 17, 2014

Went to see the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, and the new Ninja Turtles movie. I swore I wouldn't pay money to see the TMNT film, and I didn't care about Marvel/Disney's new film either, but for the sake of being social, I went.

The new turtles are UGLY! Ugly, ugly, ugly! You almost get used to it when seeing them in motion, and in all honesty the CG blending is so well done I forgot the actors were reacting to nothing, but God, the DIALOGUE!

The Turtles do nothing but spew out pop culture references and lame, lame, LAME jokes. In past incarnations, this made them likable, but this time it makes them annoying! They often make fun of how bad their jokes are, and this awkwardness is supposed to pass for humor. It doesn't work.

What the hell did they do to Mike!? Remember those two racist Autobots from Transformers 2? They turned Mike into one of them!!

The turtles' voices were all wrong, especially Splinter's.

The whole thing was just laughable, and not in a good way. The humans are no better! I don't think Megan Fox did a bad job as April, but the whole movie made me wish the turtles were scientifically accurate, because if they were, they'd have no vocal chords and could not spew out those awful lines.

And what the fuck happened to Splinter?! No wonder you never saw him in the trailer. His design is the worst. About the only good thing in the movie is Shredder's new costume. Other than that, it's terrible.

Compare that to Guardians of the Galaxy. What a difference. Over-the-top, larger-than-life story and difficult to follow action, but it pulls you in. Each character is given a personality, history, motivation, and they interact very well. The raccoon is the best part of the movie! It's a pretty good film. Helped me forget about the turtles.

Was actually very difficult to watch both movies because the whole time I'm thinking about the book(s) I'm editing. It always happens to me while in a major project. I'm thinking about the book constantly, every minute, no matter what else I'm doing. Between moments of thinking about the movie, or the game, or the job, or whatever, I'm thinking about the story. I was editing it, going over dialogue in my mind, thinking I need to change this, or that.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

My problem is that even after 8 months away from the story, I still remember a hell of a lot. Only a couple sections of the new book surprised me. The writing process must have been more intense than usual, because the entire story was etched pretty deep into my mind.

Huvek wasn't like this, and neither was Felix and the Sacred Thor. Those stories I had almost entirely forgotten by the time I did a second draft. This project is so much different, probably because it is so big, and so close to my heart.

This is drafting: everything is there. It just needs to be described and organized better.